Doom II: Hell on Earth, the best-selling PC game of 1994Photo: ID SOFTWARE

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George Peppard, Hannibal in The A-Team, who died in 1994Photo: REUTERS

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Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, the highest-grossing film of 1994Photo: PARAMOUNT PICTURES

By Tom Chivers

4:04PM GMT 12 Nov 2009

This list of facts is our entirely arbitrary comparison of two rather different times. Please do add any other interesting titbits you may wish to add, either from the news or from your own lives, in the comment box below.

Without wanting to hark back to a fictional golden age, we will say that the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" definitely beats the "International Year of Natural Fibres".

Politics and current affairs

1994 was the International Year of the Family and the International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and the International Year of Natural Fibres

1994 Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: John Roy Major, Conservative2009 Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: James Gordon Brown, Labour

1994 Sweden becomes one of the first countries to allow same-sex civil partnerships (Denmark was the first, in 1989)2009 Iceland becomes the first nation to have an openly lesbian prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir